High-precision, lightweight silicon-based deformable mirrors

Overwiew

We aim to develop a new lightweight, hybrid and very fast mirror technology based on processes for manufacturing self-supporting silicon membranes with locally doped zones.

Gil MORETTO, CRAL/CNRS

Mohamed SAADAOUI, Xavier BODDAERT, EMSE

Jean-Fabien CAPSAL, David AUDIGIER, INSA-Lyon

Frederic ZAMKOTSIAN, LAM/CNRS

We will also be developing a breakthrough technology that does not use standard ceramics, but rather 3D-printed electro-active polymer (EAP) actuators to produce, with a higher time response (1 to 3 kHz), large, highly precise displacements in line with the needs of future instruments.

To develop

Our researchs

New generation of advanced technologies for hybrid and high-speed deformable mirrors.

  • Combining additive manufacturing of electroactive polymers and self-supporting silicon membrane technology.
  • Synergistic metrology and control of these high-dynamic deformable silicon mirrors will be developed using a new phase-shifting interferometric setup and static-mode shape and strain measurements followed by a new closed-loop, real-time, nanometer-resolved Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

Four key components of new technologies :

  1. Self-supporting silicon membranes with locally doped areas to be used for the first time as electrodes ;
  2. Active shape control with multi-degree-of-freedom force actuators via 3D printing for : a new electroactive polymer ;
  3. Phase-shifting interferometric bench for small-scale characterization and measurement of the shape and deformation of the optical aperture surface ;
  4. Rapid new metrology and control of the optical wavefront.

The consortium

CRAL/CNRS, LGEF INSA LYON, MINES St-Etienne, LAM/CNRS

… VISIONARY TECHNOLOGIES PAVE THE WAY FOR POWERFUL NEW INSTRUMENTS

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